Forgotten Realms

Forword

The party already lives in Cauldron for a couple of months. The got concerned in the intrigues and circumstances playing in Cauldron. Off course Cauldron is an ideal place to live for the party as their ways are probably as dirty as every evil being influencing Cauldron.
After kidnapping some shackleborn and eliminating some strifleader gangs, the war between the firewalkers and the strifeleaders is going to a climatic battle…

1 Temple of Kossuth siege

The temple of our priest of Kossuth, Sulferius, has recently been the target of strifeleaders. Through some unexpected information from Celeste, the party knew they were going to be attacked soon. Sulferius asked support to Leonard and the Stormblades to defend his temple.
The victory for Kossuth was complete. The attackers, with some high level strifeleaders, were eliminated.
After Marianne did some knowledge drains on the survivors, the party learned that the Necromancer Mulch (who Marianne sought) had a slave market in the Malachite Fortress. Further Marianne retrieved a lot of information about the last Laugh and several wizards involved in the intrigues and the circumstances in Cauldron.
Marianne also succeeded in turning one of the surviving axemen into a very faithfull follower of Beelzebub.

2 Conquer Jzadirune and the Malachite Fortress

2.1 Jzadirune

Some members of the unnamed party, like Marianne, have already been in this dungeon several times. So the place was, thanks to Mariannes’s precise memory, familiar to her. The unnamed party was further helped by Ronny King, Leonard, Kerry (the mad axeman), the Stormblades and three priests of Loth. The priests of Loth had a deal that they would help conquering the dungeon if they were allowed to have a place in the dungeon to build there temple and proceed with the slave market.

It took the party several ambushes against a small army of half-orcs to clean most of the dungeon.
They were then attacked by two invisible monsters, what almost cost one of the females of the unnamed party. A wandering Elandra joined the party somewhere at that point.
Jzadirune also harboured some strifeleaders, who had a temple in Jzadirune, where they worshipped Cyric. The party slaughtered most of them, which forced the surviving strifeleaders to flee to the lower level: the Malachite Fortress.

2.2 The Malachite Fortress

Again Marianne was quite familiar with the Malachite Fortress. There were a couple of titanic battles with half-orcs, the remaining strifeleaders and the Necrocants. The Necrocants were an adventuring party, led by Mulch.
After wiping out the whole level, the unnamed party became master and ruler of Jzadirune and the Malachite Fortress.

As the unnamed party conquered Jzadirune and the Malachite Fortress, now was the time to accomodate the dungeon. The Malachite Fortress was given to the priests of Loth as was the deal, except for the elevator witch would be guarded by the Sith Apprentice.

Jzadirune was divided so that each member had his/her own set of rooms in this level.

Sulferious was invited to a meeting in the temple of Helm.
The following people were present to the meeting:
- Jenya Ulrikas
- Sulferius (and other members of his flock)
- Taskerhill
- Lathenmire
- Vanderboren
- Aslaxin I

Sulferius doubted a long time for if he would share the knowledge he had about The Last Laugh, the wizards involved and The Ebon Triad with the rest of the present invitees. After a lot of private discussion with the rest of his flock, it was decided to share this information.
One of the invitees was going to spy on Mr. Pip. Someone else was going to consult some saga’s to retrieve information about the cages and so on.

Visit of the architect

Marianne had already organised her part of the dungeon. After some discussion with Miior, they decided that the following rooms were necessary:
- temple to Baalzebub
- laboratory (can also be used for experiments)
- prison (for experiment subjects)
Beside this, the following rooms are necessary for having some luxury:
- bedrooms
- throne room
- theater

New path for orphans

Marianne thought about her long term planning. She decided that having a couple of well trained people could follow her up (or spread the word of Baalzebub). Therefor she went to the orphanage to give two orphans a new path in life. One of the chosen orphans was a rebel, who ran away twice. The other was a laughingstock of some orphans.
Marianne could count on her collegue Sulferius to help convincing Gretchen, the head of the orphanage, that the two orphans would be given a nice future.
After Miior went through the necessary administration with Gretchen, she brought the two orphans to “Ronny’s books”, the new shop of what once was “Ghelve’s Lockes”. Marianne and Miior were not very interested in showing the children around in the shop, so they brought them to their quarters in Jzadirune. After teaching them some manners, their training in the ways of Baalzebub started.

Frozen bodies

The party then decided to explore one of the caves that could be found on the edge of the water around the Malachite fortress. The priests of Loth, who helped conquering the dungeon, participated in the exploration. When entering one of the caves, they noticed that two caves merged to one room. It was quite could. Several blocks of ice blocked their way. A huge block of ice was cut by predecessors to provide a way to a double metal door.
Marianne has some knowledge about ancient history and searched her memory of she knew anything about the structure in this location. She remembered having read something about “Karran-Kural” and “Spell Weaver”.
Sulferious casted a fire elemental as precaution.
Kerry bursted through the locked doors, only to enter a room with a temperature of -12 °C. Fortunately the fire elemental increased the temperature a bit for those standing close to him.
The corridor was lit by a blue light eminating from the tiles on the ceiling, which also radiated the cold. There were also about ten columns of glass tubes, about 5 feet diameter, each containing a humanoid body with six arms floating in some substance.
The party didn’t give much thought about it and started hacking in one of the tubes. The glass seemed quit hard and with some effort Kerry, Marianne, Sulferius and the fire elemental destroyed one of the tubes. The body felled to the floor. The body was dragged to a boat, as the party wanted to lay the body in one of the prison cells. However the body suddenly awoke and tried to flee. Marianne counted on this and immediately attacked the six armed creature with a steal body spell, witch succeeded. Marianne took over the body and the essence of the creature was transferred to Marianne’s body. Kazul’s old body (Marianne), which was now controlled by the creature, was put in one of the prison cells.

Kazul had some troubles finding a new name for his new form. He decided to be called “Ygdrassil”. After breaking his head about his new name, he watched more closely to the education of his students. Both Miior and her halfling assistent did a good job learning them the ways of Baalzebub, praying, painting pentagrams and initiation in combat. They advanced quite well.

The step daughter of Sulferius has the luxury of being able to make her own choices. For good or for bad, she showed some interest in the ways of Kossuth. During the last couple of weeks, several of Sulferius’ followers educated her in religion related to Kossuth. She was further initiated in combat, with the quarterstaff.

Elandra, who sold her soul to Baalzebub in exchange for more beauty, was plagued with nightmare from her goddess, who is not very happy about the situation. Als Elandra is already starting to loose spell points, she is searching for a way to get her soul back. Even selling the sould of a paladin is an option.
For this purpose, she needs to talk to Baalzebub to ash her soul back. This is, however, not an easy task. A ritual must be performed in order to speak with Baalzebub. The ritual involves slaying an innocent humanoid, fill a bath with the its blood and larvae and bathe naked in that bath. Meanwhile, four priests of Baalzebub need to chant around the bath. If Baalzebub then desires, flies will be summoned around Elandra, through which Baalzebub will address her.
The same ritual is also used to initiate priests.

One of the priests in the temple wanted to do some more effort to spread the word of Kossuth. Although the step daughter was rather enthousiastic with adding ideas to brand fanatic followers. These ideas were not very well appretiated by Sulferius. Elandra used this situation to charm one of the guards (probably to be sacrificed to Baalzebub).
Sulferius put the priest behind bars. If this was for punishment or for protection agains elandra was not clear.
That night, Sulferius explained his way of following the lore of Kossuth.

The Flood Festivals are about a few weeks away. Both Sulferius and Kazul decided to organize some games, events.. for these festivities.
Sulferius would like to have some fire workd, while Kazul was thinking about a contest between the strongest fighters of each temple or church.

When going home, Kazul noticed he was being watched by an invisible Ogre Mage. A well thrown dagger blew its cover and convinced the Ogre to fly away.

After spending a couple of hours on his throne in Jzadirune, a couple of drow warned Kazul of something coming through the dungeon walls. Kazul huried to The Malachite Fortress, while sending Miior for help.
After a couple of minutes, a metal umberhuld digged through the walls, somewhere between the fortress and the water.
Some invisible Ogre Magi and an invisible metal beholder left the cave, securing the perimeter. The drow and Kazul could each see some them because of their magic resistance. Many ogres followed and started climbing the bridge. Then, because of his magic resistance again, Kazul could see the real intruder: Phantasm. Phantasm was further accompanied by Shar and Buy Bad, a drow warrior. Luckily, Phantasm did not come there for a fight.

When the party arrived, they had a chat what Phantasm actually wanted. Phantasm was very interested in the bodies of the Spell Weavers, the Soul Pillars that should be hidden somewhere near The Malachite Fortress and the Soul Cage haning in Kazul’s quarters. Phantasm payed about 5000 gp for the cage and is further going to pay a 2000 gp per living body of the Spell Weavers.
The deal was accepted by the party (off course not without having a debate how the money would be distributed).

Narlan Kianthas, a Half Elf Mage (Invoker).
Appearently they had an encounter with the adventurers who were sent to Ludeth to invite a couple of high priests of Kossuth to come to Cauldron. Sulpherius, the everburning flame, hopes to get promotion in the ranks of Kossuth had hired a band of adventurers to accompany the priest to Ludeth. There the priest would ask for some priests to accompany them to vote for Sulpherius his ascension. Unfortunately the The Fire Hounds stumbled upon them and saw them as false profets of Kossuth. They slaughtered most of them, except for one, who tried to convince them that he was a Firewalker, specialty priest of Kossuth. Fortunately The Fire Hounds spared him.
When the The Fire Hounds were telling this, Sulpherius, the everburning flame face starts to turn grim, telling he is not very pleased with these actions.
As a repayment, The Fire Hounds were willing to take over the quest to go to Ludeth to invite the high priests so that Sulpherius’ promotion can become a fact.

Not only the word of Kossuth has spread, but apparently the word of Beelzebub was told far enough to attract some followers. Four bugbears arrive at the Malachite Fortress through the Underdark passage. The Drow Elves bring them before Kazul to explain their motives. They explain that they wanted to help spreading the word of Beelzebub and as a token of thrust they have a human sacrifice with them: a survivor of some party that had wandered into these bugbears in the Underdark during an Underdark excursion. Kery shackled the survivor next to Marianne (her body was currently in possession of the Content Not Found: spell-weaver and the sacrifice for Elandra. Those four bugbears count two fighters and two priests of Beelzebub:

Evelcore, Disciple of Baalzebul.
As of now, they assist in the training of the two acolytes of Kazul: Essuth and Kellen, help to guard the compound and perform rituals to Baalzebul.

The following hours and days were going to be very important for Elandra, as she wanted try to convice Beelzebub to give back her soul.Kazul explained her earlier the ritual that needs to be performed to contact Beelzebub. The ritual started and Elandra used a dagger to slit the throat of the unfortunate sacrifice while using his blood to fill a bath. Meanwhile four priests of Beelzebub (Kazul, Miior, Sharvakas and Evelcore) chanted together while the blood of the sacrifice filled the bath. Kery plunged a hook through the feet of the still twitching body and hung the sacrifice upside down. Once the sacrifice stopped bleeding, Kery decapitated the body with a well-aimed blow of his axe.
While all four disciples of Beelzebub keep chanting, Essuth and Kellen fill the bath with buckets of larvae. Elandra undresses herself and steps in the bath. Essuth lights four candles, while the four disciples of Beelzebub keep chanting. After a couple of minutes, the flies in the room fly to Elandra and start teasing her. At this point the disciples stop chanting. Only the sound of the flies fill the room now. After a couple of minutes Elandra thought she heared a voice in the flies. To her astonishment, indeed Beelzebub was speaking to her through the flies. Elandra gets the feeling that the words come from different directions.Elandra asks her soul back and arguments that she provided two souls in return. The sudden increased buzzing of the flies gives Elandra the impression that the conversation doesn’t go very well. Indeed, Beelzebub replies two souls is not enough. After a couple of irritating questions from Beelzebub, he gives Elandra three options:

gather another three souls,

gather the soul of a paladin,

carry a child of Beelzebub.Elandra got rid of the third option in the blink of an eye. Gathering the soul of a paladin was something Elandra has already tried in the past, unfortunately to no avail. So only the first option holds.
The flies went back to the dead orc bodies in the room, which implied that Beelzebub has ended the conversation.Elandra is determined to have her soul back as soon as possible, so she is not going to loose any time.Elandra plans to hang around in the Tipped Tankard Tavern the coming evening (and night if necessary) to seduce men. As she needs three more unlucky souls, she planned to seduce and marry three more men. Elandra visited the Tipped Tankard Tavern.
She decides not to waste much time and so approaches the first man she suspects to be single (although she doesn’t not care at all). After a short talk and a drink the man comes willingly with Elandra for the time of his life. Elandra takes him to Ronny’s bookshop, where they enjoy a short stay and he experiences the time of his life. After doing some huplethepub, Elandra invites him to the basement. Although he did not immediately understand this move, he follows her. When he sees what the real basement looks like (including the oracle), he tries to run. Fortunately for Elandra, Kery catches him easily. Before he comes to his senses, aA high priest of Beelzebub offers him a contract. The contract states that he would give everything to marry Elandra. The poor man feared what was happening. He is also delighted to marry a woman with godlike beauty. Elandra pushes the man into signing the contract using her art of seduction, letting him forget his fears. After the marriage, Elandra has no further need for the man. Before he realises what happened.

seduces him quite easily, she changed her appearance. Each man gets the time of his life with Elandra. After and asking the man “if he would give EVERYTHING to marry her the rest of his life” they married.

A marriage implies having a decent contract. Fortunately this is the expertise of Ichdragzielen.